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osprey_archerEvery time I watch an Agnieszka Holland film, I hope that it will grab my heart and soul like her 1993 film The Secret Garden. Her latest, Mr. Jones, is not quite on the same tier, but on the other hand it’s supremely Relevant to My Interests, and also such a different kind of movie that you couldn’t possibly have the same relationship to it as to The Secret Garden.
The movie follows Gareth Jones, a young Welsh advisor to Prime Minister David Lloyd-Jones. His job has just been made redundant - but Jones has one last mission he wants to carry out for the prime minister: he wants to go to the USSR to talk to Stalin, and ask where Stalin is getting the money for a spending spree when all the rest of the world is reeling from the Great Depression.
As it turns out, Stalin has gotten the money by starving millions of Ukrainian peasants, stealing their grain to sell abroad in order to buy machinery in order to build up heavy industry. Of course, no one will tell Jones about this: he spends his time in Moscow suffering through orgies thrown by New York Times journalist Walter Duranty while trying to convince someone, anyone, to talk to him about what’s really going on.
He finally finagles his way into a tour of Ukraine, and finds out what’s really happening when he slips away from his minder. There’s a wonderful, understated moment when the camera lingers on the minder’s face once he realizes that Jones is no longer on the train: you can see him realizing that losing Jones will result in his own liquidation.
Meanwhile, Jones is tromping through the snow-covered Ukrainian countryside, meeting corpse-like Ukrainian children, who in one eerie scene gather around him and sing a song about hunger and cold and a neighbor who has gone mad and eaten his children. It’s tragic and also vaguely terrifying; the children exude a faint wistful sense of threat. You feel they would eat Jones if they could, not out of malice, but desperation.
It’s a quietly haunting film - stark in its palate, blinding white snow and black trees. There’s one particular image, where Jones runs away into the snowy forest and the trees seem to waver between being trees and children, which has stuck with me since I saw the film.
The movie follows Gareth Jones, a young Welsh advisor to Prime Minister David Lloyd-Jones. His job has just been made redundant - but Jones has one last mission he wants to carry out for the prime minister: he wants to go to the USSR to talk to Stalin, and ask where Stalin is getting the money for a spending spree when all the rest of the world is reeling from the Great Depression.
As it turns out, Stalin has gotten the money by starving millions of Ukrainian peasants, stealing their grain to sell abroad in order to buy machinery in order to build up heavy industry. Of course, no one will tell Jones about this: he spends his time in Moscow suffering through orgies thrown by New York Times journalist Walter Duranty while trying to convince someone, anyone, to talk to him about what’s really going on.
He finally finagles his way into a tour of Ukraine, and finds out what’s really happening when he slips away from his minder. There’s a wonderful, understated moment when the camera lingers on the minder’s face once he realizes that Jones is no longer on the train: you can see him realizing that losing Jones will result in his own liquidation.
Meanwhile, Jones is tromping through the snow-covered Ukrainian countryside, meeting corpse-like Ukrainian children, who in one eerie scene gather around him and sing a song about hunger and cold and a neighbor who has gone mad and eaten his children. It’s tragic and also vaguely terrifying; the children exude a faint wistful sense of threat. You feel they would eat Jones if they could, not out of malice, but desperation.
It’s a quietly haunting film - stark in its palate, blinding white snow and black trees. There’s one particular image, where Jones runs away into the snowy forest and the trees seem to waver between being trees and children, which has stuck with me since I saw the film.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 08:59 pm (UTC)I am glad to hear it is good; I read about it with interest last year and then hadn't realized it was available in the U.S. at all.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 09:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 09:41 pm (UTC)I have Kanopy! Thank you.
[edit] Also, congratulations on watching a feature film; you had mentioned recently it was difficult.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-22 01:40 pm (UTC)Starvation has been one of my terrors forever. Not for myself personally, but just the fact that it exists. I remember having it explained to me at a very young age (I must have heard the word and asked)--it was my first, very young, realization that life had horrors.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-22 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-22 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-22 08:40 pm (UTC)